The Dispatchis reporting that Deputy Inspector General (formerly of former Republican A.G. Betty Montgomery’s office and a GOP donor) Craig Mayton’s has testified about how the Ohio Dept. of Public Safety “obstructed” his investigation by producing 40,000 largely irrelevant documents.? I’m waiting to see if Mayton is asked about these letters which shows that Mayton himself was responsible for the massive production of irrelevant documents.

Here’s what Mayton testified to:

He said the department delayed handing over records, and then dumped 46,000 pages, most of which was useless and irrelevant, including more than 1,000 pages of blank, lined pages. ?Not only were they voluminous, they were not searchable,? he said, noting it slowed down the investigation.

Director Cathy Collins-Taylor wrote to Mayton on March 8, 2010, to inform them that the search terms he asked for in his subpoena resulted in a bunch of what ODPS believed would be irrelevant documents.? They offered to produce all the documents, or manually search all 46,000 pages and produce only the relevant ones. They conversed on the phone, and afterwards Mayton wrote back:

“In response to your offer to ‘conduct a manual search through emails to find only those documents relevant to the investigation’. I would respectfully decline, because you may not be aware of the scope of our investigation.”

I’m hard pressed to see how Mayton’s testimony already isn’t highly misleading given this letter.? I can’t wait until he’s asked about it.